[BuyMyBitcoins]

Oddly enough, I actually learned more about the mechanics of English through learning Spanish than I did through high school English class. The English curriculum was geared towards reading literature and summarizing the morals and themes rather than learning the rules of English language.

Having to understand the concept of grammatical tense through conjugating verbs in Spanish made me actually think about things like past tense, the present participle, the fact that English does not have a future tense, and much more. I’m really thankful for the realization but a little disappointed now that I realize our English curriculum in the United States is basically a culture class more than it is a language class.

[InitialLastName]

I've always thought that "English" class was a misnomer.

There are really two different pedagogical goals:

- Learn to read and write accurately and clearly in the English language (what would, in Spain, Germany or China also be "English Class")

- Practice a REPL regarding things that other people have written (in the context of a larger corpus of things that people have written), by happenstance in English because that's what the students are most familiar with[0]. This could better be called "Language Arts" because presumably they do similar things in Germany, Spain and China but they (also presumably) don't call it "English Class".

[0] I had an angry moment in high school (among many) when I found out that my English class would be spending an entire year reading translated works.

[dragonwriter]

Those aren't separate goals; the thing you call a REPL for Literature that happens to be in English is exactly for learning to read (the Read part of REPL) and write (the Print part) English accurately.

There are different components (the REPL part is called “Literature" when separated out, and other major, though conceptually lower-level, parts are called “Composition” and “Grammar”, and there are probably more; equal with Literature, and also a kind of REPL, are “Conversation” or “Speech”, where the P and, in the former case, the R of the REPL are oral rather than written.)

Foreign languages are often taught similarly, including the REPL parts.

[mbg721]

Studying Latin is great for that purpose, since mostly you get to skip the "Good evening! My passport is in the fishpond. Where is the bathroom?" lessons. I think the biggest a-ha moment there for me was realizing when an entire clause is acting as a given part of speech.

[handrous]

> The English curriculum was geared towards reading literature and summarizing the morals and themes rather than learning the rules of English language.

English class is usually a bunch of things. There's a reason they've moved away from just calling it "English", now. Comprehension is a huge part of literacy, yet most adults are pretty bad at it despite all the time schools spend trying to teach it to them.